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Nearly half of Oregon's privately-owned timber lands are owned by family foresters. These lands are nestled between the valleys where people live and the long mountain ranges where most trees are federal property or owned by industrial-scale timber companies. Located low in watersheds, many family forests have bigger streams than their upslope counterparts. These are the forests Oregonians are most likely to see when they are out driving around the countryside.In collaboration with the Seattle-based journalism non-profit InvestigateWest, Jefferson Public Radio explores the forces that are bringing change to the timber lands owned by Oregon's family foresters.

When It Comes To Fish Streams, How Warm Is Too Warm?

John R. McMillan/NOAA Fisheries

Salmon and other threatened fish need cold water to thrive. Research shows current logging rules in Oregon can result in streams warming up more than is allowed under standards meant to protect the fish.

That could force the state Board of Forestry to require more trees be left standing alongside fish-bearing streams. And that would be an economic hit to private forest landowners.

In Part Two of this story – reported in collaboration with InvestigateWest -- JPR looks at how science has ended up at the center of this debate. 

In 2002, researchers at the Oregon Department of Forestry began a nine-year study to figure out if logging activity was warming streams. They measured stream temperatures before and after timber harvest, on public and private land.

Peter Daugherty is head of ODF’s Private Forests Division. His office performed the study, with help from Oregon State University and other research partners. He explains the findings.

“Private sites, comparing pre-  to post-treatment, had a greater  frequency of exceedances,” he says.

When Daugherty says “exceedances,” he means stream temperature readings that exceeded state water quality standards. And he says streams on private timber land tended to exceed that standard a lot more often than those in state forests did.

“The probability of exceedances was 40 percent, where in all other categories, the probability of exceedance was about 5 percent.”

In fact, streams in private forests got as much as four-and-a-half degrees warmer after logging. The average increase was one and a quarter degrees. In state forests, where more streamside trees had been left, there was no increase.

Known as the RipStream study, the report has become the basis for calls to require wider buffers along streams.

Mary Scurlock is with the Oregon Stream Protection Coalition, a group of environmental and fishing industry organizations.  She says the RipStream study has pushed the Board of Forestry to consider stronger streamside protections.

“It provided a pretty clear and irrefutable basis for the finding, that even a board that is dominated by industry interests had to find that we have a problem, on the basis of that study.”

Federal officials also see the science as pointing toward the need for Oregon to increase buffers to protect fish from warming streams and silt-laden runoff. Will Stelle is the regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service. 

Credit Lucas Randall-Owens/JPR
Will Stelle is Northwest regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries). Stelle's office and the Environmental Protection Agency recently disapproved Oregon's non-point pollution control plan for the coastal area, saying it didn't adequately protect salmon and other threatened fish.

“What it tells us,” he says, “is that if we put these improvements into place, there’s a high likelihood that we will be dealing directly with the temperature and sediment loading issues with a substantial degree of confidence.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service oversees salmon recovery under the Endangered Species Act. Along with the Environmental Protection Agency, Stelle’s office has been nudging Oregon for years to tighten rules on logging and other activities that can damage salmon habitat. In 2012, a court decision forced the federal agencies to crack down.

But folks in the timber industry say there’s no need for wider stream buffers. Jim James heads the Oregon Small Woodlands Association. At the Board of Forestry meeting in April, he disputed the science behind the state standard that says stream temperatures shouldn’t rise by more than half a degree.

“There’s also science that does indicate very strongly that the minor and temporary increase in temperatures cause no harm to fish species,” he said.

Barnes also said recent evidence that coho salmon numbers are up proves there’s no need for new stream protections.

But Will Stelle says increased salmon returns don’t tell the whole story.

“It doesn’t mean that you’ve got the kind of survivals that you need in the smaller streams and tributaries where they spend the early part of their life stages,” he says.

In the end, Stelle says, the scientific case for leaving more trees to keep streams cooler is sound.

The Board of Forestry is slated to decide in June whether to require larger streamside buffers or other measures.

An advisor to Governor Kate Brown has suggested the governor may be open to some kind of public subsidy to cushion the financial blow to family foresters.

Liam Moriarty has been covering news in the Pacific Northwest for three decades. He served two stints as JPR News Director and retired full-time from JPR at the end of 2021. Liam now edits and curates the news on JPR's website and digital platforms.